This three year pilot study is investigating the impact of childhood chronic illness (i.e., epilepsy) on family patterns of interaction. Portable EEG monitoring systems and a naturalistic observational coding system are concurrently employed to record neurological and interactional behavior in the home environment. Two groups of families are being investigated in a cross-sectional study. The first group consists of families of epileptic children. The second (control) group consists of families with non-neurologically impaired, non-behaviorally aberrant children. Comparisons will be made beween family environments of these chronically ill children and normal children. The families with a chronically ill child will also be investigated in a longitudinal study of the developmental impact of the chronic illness on family interactions. Repeated measures of these same "chronically ill" families will be obtained over a period of three years. The experimental design permits inter and intra-group analysis as well as within family, single subject design techniques with the child acting as his/her own control.